Planetside
by tonight-romanticide
Summary: Not every trip planetside ends well.
_No light, no light
In your bright blue eyes  
I never knew daylight could be so violent_

The pain starts in your stomach, and spreads from there. At first, it's a burst of fire that has you doubling over in pain, your eyes fluttering as your lips part around a gasp that never reaches your ears. Your arms encase your stomach, black curls that you never bothered to push away from your pale, impish face tumble down across your shoulders and around your features. You hear a voice in the distance, calling for you - _Counsellor Troi? Is everything alright? - Counsellor Troi!_ \- but you can't answer them.

The pain is spreading, sending a wave of fire through your body. The view of your office changes around you, replaced by images - memories, even - seen by eyes that are not your own. A planetside city - locals mingling with _Enterprise_ crew members in the street, buildings looming upon either side with vines climbing up along their smooth, pitted stone faces, forests stretching out across the land in all directions beyond the edges of the city limits - colours, lights, people, places, things . . .

Arms clutch at your body, heave you to your feet. You stagger, stumble - your knees buckle beneath you, they bear your weight as they help you through the halls. Your vision blurs, images flash before your halls of the _Enterprise_ merge with the streets of the planet, phantom figures shifting in and out of view around you. They appear and disappear through bulkheads, their voices and their laughter ringing in your ears.

Your thoughts are scattered, the scenery's changing. Your body is hauled into a turbolift, your mind drifts out into the forest. A scar on the hand, a cut across the forehead - invisible blood that only you can see is trickling down across your skin, over the curve of your eyebrow and into your eyes - it's now nothing more than a phantom sensation left behind in the wake of a memory.

The turbolifts _whir_ s its way up through the decks, you hear it in your ears as clearly as you hear the buzz of the insects. The cool air of the Federation starship is a welcome relief against your skin as sweat rolls down the slope of your back. Your eyelids flutter, close over dark irises. Your head rolls forwards, your thoughts slip away from your mind.

Buried deep inside her memories, you watch. You have no influence now, you're just an onlooker - watching, watching, wacthing, through someone else's eyes as it all plays out before you: blood trickling out from weeping cuts barely an inch wide, down over blue eyes; red-blonde hair streaked with white clinging to sallow skin drenched in a freezing cold sweat; a human heart racing under the influence of adrenaline; warm bodies, barely covered by fabric, moving beneath trembling arms as they drag a semi-conscious body deep into the forest.

A waterfall looms, frothing white water tumbling over a rocky, silver-grey cliff into the drop pool below. Its roar fills your ears, water sparkling comfortingly under the dazzling glare of a summer's sun. A single thought accompanies this particular part of the memory - _Deanna would love this_ \- and then it's gone, moving on as the view of the waterfall is replaced by the rise of the forest floor, coated as it is in a soft, dewy moss, that hides the sharp edges of the pointed stones below. Blood is drawn, across exposed arms, and over the thin, fragile skin of a revealed collarbone.

There's a hazy outline is standing over you, backed in blue outlined in white by the sun and sky above. The faint colour and stocky build of the shadow above you looks faintly familiar as it raises a phaser and fires a red beam that stretches out towards you, and a scream fills your ears as your eyes snap open.

Your chest heaves as your eyes dart around the room; Sickbay. You're sat bolt upright on a biobed, sweat sticking your clothes to your body. Black curls stick to your face and arms, a tangled mess of hair and sweat as you gasp for air. You have no idea how you got there, no memory remains of your journey there through the ship, and all you know now is that Nurse Alyssa Ogwana - Beverly's right hand - is standing by your side, silent in her approach, a tricorder beeping away in hand as she runs it over the length of your body, and this is wrong, it's wrong, everything's wrong, all so very wrong. A hypospray connects with your neck, your body relaxes slightly. The emptiness in your mind receedes - it'd been there all along, you'd never noticed, why had you not noticed? - to be replaced with a great, gut-wrenching fear.

Because Beverly's not the one standing by your side.

Beverly's not in Sickbay today.

And that's where she always is, even when she shouldn't be.

You slip off the biobed, your legs unsteady as you push past outstretched arms and grasping arms that try to hold you back, push you onto the biobed - Will is there, why is he there? he should be on the Bridge with Captain Picard - your eyes find the glass that encircles Beverly's office, and your heart drops suddenly. The fear weighing down on your shoulders grows heavier, pushing your body down as a sharp breath makes your chest heave, your lungs squeezing painfully in your chest.

You turn back towards Alyssa. Sickbay is starting to blur before your eyes, the room is starting to slant dangerously to the left. "Where's Beverly?" you ask, your eyes coated in a dazed and distant, glossy, unseeing sheen, your voice hoarse from screaming.

"She went planetside today -" she begins, and you hear nothing more after that, even as you watch her lips move around other words, other phrases, other sentences, for a long moment afterwards. _Planetside, planetside, planetside_ \- they're the only words left now, ringing out hollowly inside your mind as you sink back against the edge of a biobed, fingers clinging desperately to the curving edge as your knees growing weak beneath you.

A hand touches your elbow.

Someone stands beside you. You can't lift your head to say who, your eyes fixed solely on that point on the floor before your toes. You heart races in your chest as words once again finally penetrate your mind.

"Deanna?" Will, a small part of your mind registers, it's Will stood by your side. "What's wrong?"

A painful gasp fills your ears as once again, the pain of the phaser firing down upon you from a memory that's not your own spreads through your chest. "Beverly," you rasp at last. You lift your head, find Will's eyes. "She's been shot."

 **A/N: Lyrics are from Florence + the Machines _No Light, No Light_**


End file.
